Weekly Check-in: The Future

Date Posted: May 28th, 2010

Things I’ve been thinking about this week:

Self-Consciousness

When it comes to this blog I’m incredibly self-conscious. I feel like a fraud. I have a hard time telling people what I write about and feel like I need to defend why I want to write what I write. I need to get over this. The best way to do that is write about stuff I know. So that is what I will do… after the wedding.

Plans

After the wedding this blog will be my top priority. (After usual things like keeping up my current job, keeping my relationships afloat, not letting the house deteriorate too much… etc.) Basically Wedding Crapé will be replaced by Blogging Crapé.

Second to this will be music stuff. Specifically recording an album of Italian Renaissance dance music with Aaron and various other musicians from around these parts.

Third is artsy stuff like sewing myself a new Medieval dress or two for Pennsic. (I’m tired of all the unflattering cotton stuff I have, and my new Tudor Wedding Garb is too nice for camping.) Also I’d like to experiment with making period jewelry and kids clothes to sell. And maybe putting pockets in my skirts.

I will keep this order of precedence in mind.

Letting Go

Methinks I need to let go of some commitments that are weighing me down right now and will weigh me down even more if I try to pursue my already mentioned plans. At the moment, I’m holding on… doing the minimum… but I’m not growing as a leader and the people I’m supposed to be leading are suffering for it. Also I see people who would do a much better job in my place. I shouldn’t stop them from shining.

But it’s hard. I feel guilty for not wanting to grow into these positions. I had dreams for myself and they no longer fit. At the same time I know that feeling guilty about not fulfilling past dreams is silly. It doesn’t make me do what I need to do to be the right person for the job. It just makes me feel bad.

Also, it’s not like I can’t go back to these positions later. I could definitely see myself doing that at some point.

Spending to Earn

I’m thinking about spending money on this Blogging project of mine. I want a better design for the site and I have someone in mind to do it. But that will cost $$. I’ve also been looking for a community to help me get over my business/blogging related mental-blocks. I think I’ve found one that would be a good fit for me, but it costs $$. My hyper-sensitive instinct says paying money for such “help” is a scam or something, but if I view it through the lens of “it’s a class” it’s not so bad.

The trick is I need to block out the time to actually make use of it. It’s not going to be something where I just show up and have everything done for me. I’m going to have to pay money and work. But I think in the end it’ll be worth the effort. I’ll about it for another few weeks before I make any serious commitments. Plus there’s a wait list so I may not even get in.

At this point I trust myself to keep going with this blogging thing. I’ve been doing it for over a year and a half. I’d still really like doing it and want to improve at it. It’s worth throwing money at. Also throwing money at anything not related to music is a big mental block of mine so… yeah.

That’s about it for now. A week from Sunday is The Wedding. You can expect a Weekly Check-in next Friday. After that I’ll be on my honeymoon in Colorado. I’ll try to have some post ready for that Friday. It won’t be a check-in because… I won’t be there for the checking in. But it’ll be something.

Whee!

Tags: Career, Character-Development, Leadership, Meta, Money, Self-Discipline.
Posted at 1:20 pm | 1 Comment »

We Have Arrived

Date Posted: April 17th, 2010

Most products are solutions in search of problems. Examples:

“Convenience Food” –> assumes that people wouldn’t want to cook for themselves if they didn’t have to. Isn’t it just as likely that people don’t want to cook because they don’t know how or that they think it’s too hard or whatever?

Shampoo –> See No ‘Poo. (I’ve been doing this for a little over a week now. We’ll so how it goes.

Computerized Sewing Machines –> The vast, vast majority of sewers can do amazing stuff with a Singer from the 50’s that goes forward and backward. If it can do a zigzag stitch, that’s nice too. The rest…. unnecessary.

New Clothes –> The thrift store is your friend. It takes a really really long time to wear out clothes and most of the stuff in the thrift store isn’t all that used.

Fancy Athletic Shoes –> We all should be walking barefoot (or close to it). The simpler the shoe the better.

Cameras –> A fancy camera in the hands of an amateur will still turn out amateurish pictures.

Computers –> Most of us don’t really need a computer every 4 years, but we’re forced out of them by new software that won’t work on the old ones.

If I wanted to I could think of more examples. Very few things in life are actually necessary. Some things will enhance our happiness. Too many things will weigh us down.

This has huge implications. For ourselves, it means that we can get more freedom by paring down the stuff that doesn’t matter. For the world, it means we probably have the means to enable everyone to have their basic needs met.

If we have the capability to create such a world, why aren’t we? I think it’s a matter of structure. We’re a capitalist society. We’re told to spend spend spend all the time. Many of us have thousands of dollars of debt. We have a mistaken belief that more stuff = more happiness. Until enough of us shun this belief system, we won’t as a society get to that place where none of us have to worry about how to get food, shelter, and safety.

Luckily, we don’t need society to be on our side in order to reap the benefits of getting rid of the unessential. Each thing you don’t need that you can get rid of is more money in your pocket. More money means you you have more you can save. More savings means less worrying about how to feed and shelter yourself. Not having to worry about that stuff is the whole goal.

The more of us that change our lives in a certain way, the more society changes in that direction. Businesses will start catering to our new values. Then it’ll be us running the businesses. Then there may not even be businesses as such. All volunteer organizations… If you wanted to sit on your butt all day you could! Without guilt even!

I think we have arrived at the age where this is possible. To go from possible to actuality we need to focus on what’s important and get rid of the unnecessary.

Tags: Abundance / Scarcity Mentality, Money, Thrift Tips, YMOYL.
Posted at 8:55 am | No Comments »